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Decisions, decisions. Buy ice cream or not? Pretty easy. Have a beer tonight or not? Again, not too difficult to choose. How about moving across the world to be with someone? How about deciding to marry someone? How about deciding to have children with someone? Some decisions are more important than others, aren’t they?

Isn’t the rule that whatever seems to be a massive and potentially life-changing decision, the less it seems like a decision at all? Perhaps the worst part of it is that other people can make life-changing decisions for you. Just life, I guess.

Is it easier if you ask yourself the question? If you’re going to though, you need to trust that you’ll be able do something with the answers, don’t you?

Maybe someone broke up with you, maybe you were the one who ended it. Still tough either way. Is it true that sometimes we need to be absolutely heartbroken by something, before we finally understand how bad it was for us? How about how good things might become?

Sometimes, something horrible in your life can occur in a split second that changes your life forever. You didn’t see it coming, how were you possibly to know?

The thing is that no matter how much planning you do, one tiny mis-step, one moment of a lack of concentration can end it all in an instant. Life, right?

You can plod through your life with nothing changing from one day, one week, one month, to the next. It doesn’t really matter how much you ask for something to shake you up, don’t you need to take control of it yourself?

Your world has changed. No one else might know anything about it but all of a sudden, your next heartbeat will be different to the last one. Deep breaths.

So what do you do now? You want things to be real, don’t you? Not for them just to be an idea that you have. How about a plan? How about deciding to do everything that you’ve ever wanted to do? A bucket list?

Bucket lists are supposed to be about doing things you’ve always dreamt about, not about making the wrong things in your life right.

Everyone surely has a path to follow that’s important to each of us. It’ll be different for every single one of us, of course, but isn’t it important to find that one reason to live and to appreciate the life that you have? It could be anything. What would be on your list?

Imagine going through the whole of your lifetime without laughter. How about laughing every day? Simple wishes.

It’s cheesy but don’t you need to seize the day before the sun sets every night? You’ll need to take a deep breath and almost take a blind leap of faith. Scary as shit. Let go of what is worthless, invest your time in the things that you want to do and the people that you care about. Everything important to you is precious, isn’t it? Holding them close because they won’t be here forever. The people as well as the moments.

Again, so what do you do? Dream a new dream, set another goal? Tomorrow, smile at a stranger and mean it. Fuck it, do it today.

If your dreams don’t scare you, are they big enough?

If things aren’t making sense or adding up in your life, isn’t it time to start subtracting? Is it true, is it helpful, is it inspiring, is it kind, is it necessary? If you answered yes to all five questions, then you know what to do. Everything that you’ve ever wanted. It might not always be easy but fuck, won’t it always be worth it? Make a list. I’ve just done it. Shouldn’t you be excited to try and give yourself everything that you’ve ever wanted in your life? Wise people will tell you that no one ever gets everything that they want, and whilst that’s a beautiful thing, isn’t it worth trying for all of those things?

Doing the things you love is like a good marriage. Once you get into it, it’s difficult to get out of and why the hell would you want to?

You let your success make your noise, don’t you? Maybe you will, maybe you won’t, worth a try at least. Maybe the little things you do in your life will become big things when you look back on them.

How about travel? Doesn’t it force you to trust strangers and to lose sight of everything that you thought you knew? You are constantly out of your comfort zone. You’re not au fait with everything in your life any more. All of your journeys will have secret destinations, won’t they?

Whether it’s travel related or not, you’ll have no idea where to leave from and and no clue about where you’ll end up going. Pretty cool.

Make a list of the things that you want to do and start ticking them off. No, you’re not lucky, you’re blessed.

Imagine letting go of someone that you love and that you’re still completely in love with. Everyone talks about it like it’s simple. Unfurl your fingers, one at a time, until your hand and your heart are completely open. What if your hand has been clenched for over a thousand days though? The heart isn’t faring much better. It still aches every day. It’s easier said than done, but is time to open it and see what happens with someone new? Chances are that it could be a fucking car crash. Only one way to find out though, I guess.

I chose her and she chose me. Would l continue to choose her, over and over and over, forever more? Without a second of thinking about it, without doubt, in a fucking heartbeat. I’d keep choosing her. It’s not my choice any more though.

Things will be missed, of course they will.

The way that she would always take one of my eyelashes that had fallen out, blow it away and make a wish. I hope all of her dreams came/come true.

The way that she invents words of her own.

The way that her left foot goes crazy when she’s mad. She knows that I know she does it and it makes her smile, although she’d never admit it.

Crying in front of her for the first time and being told that it was okay.

She never needed to ask to be the little spoon, it was mutually understood.

The way that she claps her hands at the tiniest little thing is fucking adorable. I should have told her that.

The way that she says yes, and the way that she says no.

How she giggles. She should be playing to Madison Square Garden, purely with that laugh. She’d sell the place out.

She can tell me to fuck off and it’s one of the cutest things ever.

Have you ever had a hug from someone so good that it feels like they think that it might be the last time that they ever hold you? She has it nailed.

When you’re singing in the shower and she tells you how much she loves it because it’s like you’re on stage at Wembley Stadium.

When she tucks her hair behind her ear and she doesn’t even notice that you notice. Heart melting stuff every time.

When she places her hands on her hips and grins. Frightening. She could ask me to do pretty much anything and I would.

She can be grumpy, but you drop an eyebrow in her direction and she smiles. All is right in the world once more.

The way that she turns her head, smiles, bites her lip and looks in my eyes. I’d crawl across broken glass for that one more time.

You’re lucky if you meet that rare man or woman that you have come across in your life for who you believe that the extra effort is worthwhile. Her? Oh, yes.

You can meet someone who’s just right for you, Maybe, just maybe though, they’re not meant for you. So you break up, you lose them, you lose some or all of your feelings, chances are that you might never feel the same again. You should stop questioning why though, shouldn’t you? Suck it up, just accept it and move on? Good luck.

Do you ever fall out of love with somebody? Perhaps you just let go and move on, although there is an incredible difference between letting go and giving up. Am I finally letting go? Am I finally giving up? Sometimes all you can do is shrug. If you don’t know, how can anyone else know?

When you’re not with someone, is it likely that you’ll meet someone else? Maybe it’s the best thing to meet someone new. Maybe it’s the worst idea ever for you. Is it unfair on that new person if you want them to have similar qualities or traits than the person that’s just left you behind? Absofuckinglutely, no one new needs that pressure.

Sometimes, a simple hello can turn into a beautiful, potentially life changing moment. You need to open yourself up to it first though, right? Are you ready, will you ever know? If it’s meant to be, you’ll know. Your heart will beat a lot faster when that message hits your phone or when you hear the sound of their voice.

What if that new person is the song that you can’t get out of your head, no matter how hard you try? Is that better or worse than the one person in your life that you miss?

Breathe. Let go. Once again, good luck.

If you didn’t love them, this never could have happened. Accepting that love and everything that follows is part of letting it go.

When I say I’m going to forget you, I know, and you know that it’s impossible to forget someone I once knew. Someone that I once loved. Do I still? Head and heart fighting again probably. Do I need a girl like you? Is that even possible? I guess we’ll find out.

Have you ever fallen for someone that you know you shouldn’t have? Maybe you tried hard to fight your feelings, but you just couldn’t stop what they were telling you. It’s tough though, to hide them every single day, especially when you know that you want to shout to everyone from the rooftops about the new person in your life. Isn’t a part of a new love exposing everything about yourself, almost to the point of potentially being hurt by someone that you think you trust? You fall deeper with each passing day, don’t you? They’re only a friend though, nothing will happen. You keep on saying to yourself that you don’t want anything to occur, but you know that you behave differently when you meet their eyes. You’re not being honest with yourself. You keep telling yourself that it isn’t right.

What if they’re out of bounds, if they’re completely out of your league? They’re too beautiful, loads of people want to be with them. Zero chance. The kicker is that she’s married and her husband is a famous footballer. It was not fucking cool at all. He couldn’t help it though, much as he wanted to.

No matter how many beautiful people that you set your eyes upon, if you’ve already set your heart on someone, do you even notice anyone else?

She was a secret crush. She’s beyond beautiful, smart, funny and she’s super chilled. She swears like a sailor, she’s basically the complete package. Most important of all though, she’s kind and she’s generous, not just to other people but with her thoughts and her feelings.

A glance turned into a stare. It was impossible for them to be together, to be anything at all. Try and hide it, so that no one can see? Not a chance. Pretending forever? Not a chance. You tell everyone that you’re just friends, that you’ll never be anything more. Again, you can never show your feelings though. Maybe you don’t want them to know because your friendship can’t be risked over this. What if she was the one doing the chasing though?

Maybe you don’t need a girl or a boy who says that they have to have you. Maybe you just need that person who says that they’re afraid to lose you.

It’s so hard but sometimes, you have to question your instincts and choose a different path. It’s not always that easy, everyone gets that. All he knew for sure is that they were on a course to somewhere, and it was nigh on impossible to know where they would end up.

Everyone kept telling him how they thought that she felt. They said that she didn’t care, but she never showed him that she didn’t. They told him that she didn’t love him. They kept telling him that she was no good, but he was the only one who saw something different in her and nobody understood why. He looked in her eyes and he knew that there was something there.

One day, she kissed him. Isn’t it true that sometimes all you need is just a second of courage? He kissed her back.

They got together and it was incredible. He fell hard. All he wanted to do, all of the time was to be with her. Grab her hand, wrap his arms around her, cuddle her. Send her flowers, leave little notes in her bag when she visited him or when he visited her. Compliment her on how fucking astonishing she was. Isn’t that what all of us should want? She asked him exactly how he felt, she demanded complete honesty. He told her that he loved her and she breathed out, and told him that she loved him too. She was holding her breath, waiting to listen to the words that she was desperate to hear leave his mouth.

For however many reasons there might be why they got together, there were always more reasons why they shouldn’t have. Although he was a tad naive, he knew that it would be tough, that there would be obstacles to overcome. He wanted to be with her for the rest of his life though. Forever. Forever ever. All is perfect in their world now, right? No.

One day came along, and she said no, she said that she didn’t want the same things from him as he wanted from her any more. As she told him, he felt like his ribs had clamped shut. It was like bullets hitting him behind the eyes, everything was not as it should have been. Devastation wasn’t the word, he didn’t understand, she had seemed like she wanted all of him. Sometimes, there’s maybe too much truth in this world and not enough understanding and he had none of that in that moment. She was why his legs almost collapsed every time that he saw her. Becoming her boy was now an impossible wish. She didn’t want him any more.

People might tell you that it’s painful to forget someone you love. Some other people might tell you that it’s painful to wait for someone you love. Everyone will get hurt by someone in the course of a relationship. Getting hurt is a part of life. It’s not easy though. She told him that he couldn’t be her everything as well as her secret.

He moved on though and he accepted it. No other choice.

Months passed and then one day, she showed up on his doorstep asking if they could go for dinner. He acquiesced, it would have been rude not to. She poured her heart out and told him that she’d made a mistake, that she wanted to be with him and that she’d do whatever it would take to be his girl.

She broke his heart that night because that was all that he’d ever wanted. The problem was that he’d promised his heart to someone else by this point and he wasn’t going to go back on his word.

Sometimes you’ve got to give up something to get something. Turns out that something else matters in your life.

Phenomenology. It’s the idea that you can see something or someone but not really be aware of it or them. The thing or things that blend into your every day life. Most of us see all of those things but are never consciously aware of them. In order to see them for what they are, you need to actually realise that they’re there. Makes sense, right?

She was in his life, not on a daily basis but he knew who she was.

There was no reason for it happening. None whatsoever, but it did. Not only did it happen, but it became something that neither of them could ever have expected. They didn’t meet in any conventional manner. No drinks at a bar, no meal at a restaurant, no film at a cinema. It turns out that there was a connection though.

Everything changed, the moment that he first met her properly. He lived in a country of millions of people, but from then on, he wanted only her. In a world full of men who could catch her eye, he wanted to be the one to make her eyes sparkle. She was pretty. Her voice melted his heart. The way she said his name? It’s how you would want your name to be said by anyone that you’re in love with. Some people just don’t have the emotional room for compassion, but she had it in spades.

Calls, emails, messages, catching up whenever they could, everything moved at a frenetic pace.

She was a disaster sometimes, in the nicest possible way, but she was worth all of the effort, all of the time. Sure, she had things going on that he tried to understand and have empathy with, tough as it was. He had plenty going on as well and she understood. It’s just life, why wouldn’t all of us understand? She was a fragile heart in a wild place, not like a flower, more like a hand grenade but he loved it.

She was an escape, just when he needed to get away. On some level, don’t we all dream of escaping from our everyday lives? We think about breaking free from our daily routines. Maybe that’s why a lot of people love magic, because we crave surprise. An escape from the predictable. That one moment when we genuinely don’t know what will happen next? Is that how we know we’re alive? She made him feel that way.

She told him that he was everything to her. He told her that he felt the same way about her but that almost worried her more than if he had never said those words. She thought more girls would want to be with him because they couldn’t have him because he loved her. Flawed logic in his mind but she believed it, so he had to accept it. Someone’s perception is their reality. It’s so easy to read too much into things, or take things the wrong way, she said. I’ve made a point of trying harder not to over think every little thing, she said. He adored her for even saying it.

She also told him that she was in love with him and that he had her whole heart. How sweet and awesome is that? Don’t things always seem to make the most sense when the people involved make no sense at all? No one outside of the two of them understood it. Thing is, a tiny fraction of everyone’s story is all you ever know at any one time. Don’t ever assume a fucking thing.

That intensity that you feel towards one person is intoxicating, isn’t it? Capture every moment with them that you can. Watching her or him smile, wondering what he or she is dreaming about.

Some people have an aura to them. They attract people by simply being themselves. That’s what she did. He didn’t expect her to be perfect, just to be perfect for him. Was she? If a woman can make you laugh, when all you want to do is fight with the world, then she’s a keeper.

It was difficult, they were miles apart from each other in distance, geographically. In every other way, they were right for each other. They thought the same thoughts, they finished each other’s sentences, they liked a lot of the same music, they shared a lot of common interests. Everything that you would want from someone that you think that you’re going to spend the rest of your life with, they had. Jealous yet? They’re the two people at a party who aren’t even in the same room but everyone else there, knows that they’re supposed to be together. They were so absorbed by each other that when they went even a day without being in touch, thoughts of missing each other utterly consumed them.

Something flipped though one day. He didn’t change. The way she treated him changed. At least in his mind. She thought the same thing the other way around because he cared enough to ask the question. He heard every word that she said and felt the ones that she didn’t, like a dagger to the heart.

Yet he misses her. A little too much more than he should and a little bit more every day. Will that fade? Time will tell, although apparently time is a healer.

Too much of anything is too much. They didn’t take the time to synchronise both of their hearts because it was too much, too quickly. That might mean living for forever with regrets of what might have been. Such a fucking shame, especially if there isn’t anyway back.

Your head may tell you that you don’t miss that person but it’s bullshit, isn’t it? Your heart knows differently, that’s where you should take your advice from. He misses her and is having a hard time moving on because everywhere he goes there are reminders of her. A song. A voice from a stranger that is similar to her almost perfect voice.

Where she used to be is now a hole in his life. Not every day but sometimes, he’s just wandering around it in a daze. Sucks to be him.

No blame is apportioned but when someone cares enough for you, that they see that they hurt you, don’t they put their ego aside to give you a heartfelt apology? Maybe she doesn’t think that she did anything wrong. Maybe she didn’t. Maybe he didn’t. Perspective rears it’s ugly head again.

Distance isn’t always physical, is it? All that he knows that not being with her, means that he’s in the wrong place. At least for now. Does she have forever? No way. It’s not that he liked his own sadness but he sure doesn’t care for it anymore.

Does she like him? He thinks so. Does she care? He thinks so. Does he care about her? Deeply.

It’s easy to get distracted in life. It’s so full of noise so you try to focus on what’s important. Sometimes your eye can be drawn away, so you get lost in someone else but aren’t they always drifting back to that one person?

You don’t even know what it is that you’re losing until that person isn’t there any more.

Don’t we hope that all of the important people in our life who leave, gravitate back towards us at some point, despite how far you think that they might have wandered in the wrong direction?

However, what if them not being there with you makes them happy? That’s a great feeling. Knowing that someone you love is happy, right?

Did he need her then? Does he need her now? He doesn’t know anything for certain when it comes to her but he’ll figure it out.

Choosing nothing or no one gets you nothing. It’s never easy when something ends but doesn’t a little part of everyone remain behind? Doesn’t it make part of us get stronger as we move forward?

You wait for the one who would do anything to be your everything, don’t you? At least for as long as your heart tells you that it’s time to stop because it can’t take it any more.

It’s really important to have those people in your life who push you to be better, to be different, to care about and love someone who isn’t yourself. Will he be with her? Will she be with him? Will you be with who you want to be with?

Aren’t the regrets in your life the things you haven’t done, rather than the things you have? Those lost opportunities, those lost possibilities, the feelings that you might never get back. Those moments, when you lose them, can they be found again? They’re gone forever. Aren’t they? Hopefully not. Will we ever know though?

The chances are that if you ask people what they’ve always wanted to do, the most likely response is that they haven’t done it. Me included. Sad in a way, almost heartbreaking for all of us.

We pray for opportunities or chances, we seek out opportunities and we yearn for the slightest chance of something that we want. The good news is that we’ll meet opportunities in every day that we spend on this planet. The bad news is that we miss a lot of them, only to come to a later realisation that we fucked it or them up. Isn’t an opportunity like a bus or a train on the move? Once it’s doors have closed, it’s gone. Another one will come along but will it carry better opportunities? A sliding doors moment, right? Too often, we might miss out on a chance of something because we were too busy or we were too distracted. Maybe we were just shit scared of asking a question and being rejected. Who can say, perhaps we just missed those chances tapping us on our respective shoulders. Excuses will always be there for you, opportunities might not be.

Can you ever undo it, ever unlive it, or relive it all? Why not take the plunge? Say something. Maybe you could have had what you wanted. You’d be silly to not ask the question, wouldn’t you? Don’t miss all of those opportunities along the way to do what you wanted to do because you didn’t have the confidence to tell yourself. Say something?

Some people say that it’s not what happens in your life that matters, it’s what you think happened. Just bullshit or is it true? It can be quite possible that the most important thing to happen in your life will be something that didn’t actually take place. Make sense or not? Maybe you missed the opportunity to make it happen. You wanted it to but you didn’t follow through.

Maybe all, maybe just some of us go through life disappointed in ourselves. Do we all keep a memory of that one moment when we missed out on someone or something?

It was too easy to start rushing towards all of the excitement at a million miles an hour. I should have taken the chance but I didn’t.

It was a road that we didn’t take, towards a door that we never opened. Correction, a road that I didn’t take, towards a door that I never opened. We chatted. We flirted. We joked and we touched each other in a way that people who like each other do. Bumping shoulders, gentles nudges in the ribs, playful rubs of each other’s backs. We shared stories of our travels, tales of your life in Zurich and mine in Sydney and Scotland. New York featured a lot. My favourite city in the world. What are the chances of bumping into you when the place has over 8.5m people living there?

It hits me that I’ve lost you, although I never really had you. Will you now rank among the things I’ll always regret? I’m not sure. Okay, definitely an opportunity lost but should it matter that much? Maybe it does. I found myself feeling for one of the first times in my life that I’d maybe missed out on something. On someone.

Not going to lie, there’s a constant differential dynamic between the excitement and thought of someone new and the security with one person. Not that I have her but taking the chance is scary, perhaps the reason that I didn’t ask the question that I should have.

I always win in my imagination but this time I lost. You might have said no to dinner, to drinks, to something more. I might never know now. I’ll probably never know now.

Don’t be afraid of missing those opportunities in your life, give them a go. Behind every bad decision or misjudgment is an opportunity that somebody wishes they had missed.

Tonight it’s easy to feel like the one who is on the sidelines, the one who has missed out.

The truth always comes out in the end, doesn’t it? Never underestimate someone’s ability to make you feel guilty for their mistakes. To make you tell lies for them, to the point where mutual friends disown you. I used to care that those friends weren’t in my life any more, but now? I don’t give a fuck.

She was amazing. I’ve never felt a connection to a human being quite like her before, except for one, a very special little lady who will always be the most important person to me on this planet.

She wasn’t as amazing as I thought though, she fucked up. Next to hurting your family, cheating is the worst thing that someone could do to you.

I don’t care who was with her before me but it would have been nice to not have someone there during me.

You shouldn’t have to deal with someone who wants to take a relationship in a backwards direction, who needs space or who’s cheating on you.

Fuck you for cheating on me. Fuck you for making me use the the word cheating. This wasn’t five card stud or poker. You weren’t sneaking a look at my cards. These were our lives and you messed up both of them. You killed all of this, but worst of all, you killed it when my back was turned. Maybe it was in front of my face all of the time but I couldn’t see it because I loved you. Fuck, I was in love with you.

The truly scary thing about those previously undiscovered lies was that they had a tendency to diminish better people than me, more than the ones that we all find out or know about. They wash away the foundation of our being, our self-esteem, our very strength. Her lies. Her pretence.

Betrayal was what I felt, my heart broken not just by a girl that I was in love with, but also by someone that I believed that I would be best friends with forever. Losing your best friend is the worst. Add in the fact that you then lose all the people in her life that you inherited and loved. Let’s be honest, if they all choose to pick sides, there’s only going to be one winner.

When you cheat in any facet of your life, you dim your own light. You’re threatening your own self-esteem and your relationships with others by undermining the trust that people have in your ability to be true. Their ability to trust you ever again. A chance worth taking? I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure that we all know so. Well, clearly not all of us.

Natural disasters just happen. Earthquakes just happen. Tornadoes just happen. Your tongue does not just happen to fall into some other boy’s mouth. You don’t happen to just trip, fall and land into someone else’s bed.

Those who cheat on their partners who are loyal to them; don’t deserve them. It’s a shitty attitude to disrespect a person who is loyal in a relationship, by cheating on him or her. Why? Just go and be with someone else, we’ll get over the pain in time.

I gave my heart to a girl who told me that she loved me, who told me that she wanted to be with me. It turns out that she was afraid of everything that I offered. Whilst that’s okay, it’s not okay to use that to then decide to sleep with someone else, especially when you tell someone every day that you love them. When you hug someone the minute that they walk through the door. When you lie in bed next to someone every night. Lie is the operative word, I guess.

I didn’t and will never understand why she took a chance on our future, cheating on me, again. By the time she tried to smooth talk her way out of it, I was done. No more crying. Even my heart had given up on her, fuck, even my tears had given up on her. I’d already moved on, her cheating was almost the equivalent of moving out and leaving the key in the mailbox.

Some people view love and romance as a bond never to be broken between a couple. Sadly, there are other people that see both of those things as a game, where the goal is to manipulate or twist someone and gain an emotional hold over their partner. Those horrible people who view love, relationships and romance as a game are much more likely to have multiple love interests; cheating is just another way to gain control in their relationship.

She knows though and I hope that whoever is next for her doesn’t ever feel the way that she made me feel. Everyone of us on this planet has feelings. Don’t ever use those feelings, don’t ever take them for granted. If you weren’t interested any more, you should have let me know before you started going elsewhere.

You didn’t just cheat on me; you cheated on us. You didn’t just break my heart; you broke our future.

You hold the door open for everyone. You apologise when people bump into you. Not something that you should do, but hey ho, you do it, the right thing. It’s definitely not the wrong thing. Politeness and manners though, never bad things.

Most of us, perhaps all of us would do anything for the people that we care about. The people that we love. Whatever they need, you’re there, aren’t you? A friendly ear, a hug, a smile a word of advice? It turns out that you’re considerate of other people’s feelings. Who knew? What if they’re really struggling though? If they have issues or problems going on, are you able to be there?

It’s not always easy to have that sense of intuition though as regards their life, about what they have happening to them. You could be forgiven for not knowing that anything is going on, for not knowing that everything isn’t okay. For not knowing that they might be having a difficult period. Sometimes, perhaps all of the time, that person in your life has to reach out to you. It’s easier said than done, granted, but don’t they need to let you know that everything isn’t okay and that they need your help?

If they don’t reach out though, what can you do? Not a great deal really. The one thing that you know intrinsically though is that you will do and have done anything and everything that you could. Hopefully for a large percentage of us, that’s in our nature. It’s inbuilt hopefully.

All of that should be part of your daily make up, shouldn’t it? Be good, be kind, be nice. No games. Always.

What happens though when you really need to step up? To do anything? To be the person that the one person in your life thinks that you can be. You step up, don’t you? What happens though when it’s tougher than you think? What happens when you lose someone close to you?

Sometimes the person who tries to keep everyone else happy is always the most lonely person, so never leave them alone, because they will never say that they need you.

He was a childhood friend but then suddenly he was gone, taking with him, like everyone does, a lifetime of private and unknown dreams, experiences, fears and hopes. Again, like everyone does when they pass, he left the good parts of himself behind to everyone that he loved and cared about.

He left pretty explicit instructions about what he wanted his friends to do with his ashes after he passed. Cheeky to the end. Scatter some of them from the top of the harbour bridge in Sydney. We don’t think we hit anyone. Let some go underneath the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles. Dump some into Niagara Falls. Spill whatever is left into the East River from the Brooklyn Bridge. We might have hit people in NY, it was windy! Apologies.

He had a soulful kindness, a never-ending generosity. My heart twisted in my chest when the call came. When every fibre of your being wants to shut down, do you have a choice? Not really. You know what you have to do. Just do the right thing, despite how hard it might be for you personally. You have to suck it up, it’s not about you any more. Whatever you are asked, no question, no possibility of saying no. You’ve been in tears for days, your eyes are red, you might look like you have a thousand yard stare. Staring at yourself in the mirror is a scary thing because you don’t want to see the face that’s looking back at you. You just get on with it though. Sometimes the sadness grips you so suddenly and with so much intensity that it takes every breath you have to just keep moving. The worst part is that you can do everything to protect your heart and it’ll still get broken.

It seems that he was just nursing a new secret in a life that was already full of old secrets.

It’s been easy since to have pangs of guilt from promises that weren’t kept about keeping in touch, we’ve all been there.

The lesson learned?

Love your fucking life with all that you can give. Take photographs of everything, especially the people that you love. Tell those people that you love them on a regular basis. Talk to random strangers. Do things that you’re terrified to do, because fuck it, all of us will die one day and not many people will remember a lot of the things that we did. Take your life and make it the best story in the world. Always choose happiness. Life is too short to fuck around with negativity, pain and remorse.

Friendship is when people know every little detail about you, but yet they still like you. Isn’t it?